Mass media culture are passive cultural Free Essay Example

In the last century television, film and video came to dominate the mass mediated world and increasingly continues to do so today with an abundance of entertainment being brought into the homes of millions of people globally provided by the culture industry. A popular and traditional view of mass media audiences sees them as passive ‘culture dopes’, a phrase used by Stuart Hall (Notes on Deconstructing ‘the Popular’ 1981) describing the audience as passive consumers of whatever media is placed in front of them.

Although not supported by Hall, this was the opinion taken by Adorno and Horkheimer in the mid 1940’s who took a pessimist view of the culture industries believing that ordinary people are unable to resist the power of the mass media.

More recently others, for example John Fiske and Henry Jenkins, have argued for a more positive view of consumers of mass media and instead of conceptualising the audience as passive cultural dopes, describe them as “consumers who also produce, readers who also write, spectators who also participate” (Jenkins 1992).

Taken in this context, consumers who are fans are not passively accepting what is placed before them by the culture industry but are actively working with their preferred text and in doing so create pleasure and meaning (Fiske 1992). This is nowhere more evident than on the internet were many thousands of sites are dedicated to specific television programmes and films, particularly in the science fiction genre where a huge volume of fan activity is to be found which can be argued to contradict the idea of consumers as passive cultural dopes.

In her book ‘Movie Crazy’ (2001) Samantha Barbas looks at the early fans of cinema in America focusing on the period between the early 1900’s to the late 1940’s, when “for millions of Americans, Hollywood was a dream factory, turning out elaborate fantasies of glamour, success and romance” leading to a “movie-crazy climate” in which actors and actresses became highly visible celebrities with often more publicity given to them in the media then more serious news items. This gave rise to a great deal of public concern about the effects of the cinema, believing that many fans confused fantasy with reality because they were not able to leave the dream world behind when they left the theatre. In the decade following 1910, Barbas reports that psychologists and social scientist came to the “shocking” conclusion that “the movies were like a drug”.

This thinking along with the assumption that fans were immature, na�ve and “gullible spectators” can be seen reflected in the work of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, members of the Frankfurt School which emerged after the First World War producing theories and ideas about the workings of society which were to prove highly influential in a modern theory of mass culture (Docker 1994).

In their essay “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” written in 1994 (www.marxists.org) Adorno and Horkheimer present a negative account of the mass culture of the 1920’s and 1930’s, believing that the imminent coming of television would lead to “the impoverishment of aesthetic matter” and that “the man with leisure has to accept what the culture manufacturers offer him” on the basis that cinema disallows for “individual consciousness” because the consumer has to keep up with the barge of facts coming at them from the screen leaving no scope for interpretation.

According to Docker (1994) the consumers that Adorno and Horkheimer refer to “are positioned by the Culture Industry essay as passive, as having automatically to accept as received truths their totalising judgements”. Adorno and Horkheimer were not the first ones to have a negative opinion of consumers; an earlier view was taken by F R Leavis (Mass Civilisation and Minority Culture, 1930) who believed that film was “mainly a means of passive diversion, and that it tends to make active recreation, especially active use of the mind, more difficult”. In essence, the theorists of the early to mid 1900’s took the view that consumers were passively accepting whatever the media put in front of them and also implying that the culture industries served their own purposes and not those of the audience.

John Fiske (1987) in ‘TV: re-situating the popular in the people’ (http://wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.ac/ReadingRoom/1.2/Fiske.html) states that this approach to the audience is “theoretically sterile”, believing that “people are not a passive, helpless mass incapable of discrimination and thus at the economic, cultural and political mercy of the barons of industry”, and so taking a stance opposite to that of Adorno and Horkheimer.

In his article ‘The Cultural Economy of Fandom’ (The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media 1992) Fiske differentiates between those that are consumers of mass media and those that make up the realm of fandom on the basis that fans take from mass culture “certain performers, narratives or genres” and rework into “intensely pleasurable, intensely signifying popular culture that is both similar to, yet significantly different from, the culture of more ‘normal’ popular audiences”. Fiske refers to this as a “shadow cultural economy”, describing a separate culture made by the fans which functions outside, and arguably alongside, that which is produced by the industries. On this basis Fiske refutes the idea that all consumers are cultural dopes because their activity by definition means they are not passive.

According to Fiske (1992), even without coming under the banner of fandom the audience will find personal significance in a given text, referring to this as “semiotic productivity” to describe how an individual will make a meaning out of what they are consuming. For example female audiences may feel empowered by the portrayal of assertive and confident women characters in the media, as in the case of the ‘Prime Suspect’ series depicting a woman in charge of criminal investigations who whilst being a strong woman is also humanised by showing that she makes mistakes that cost dearly in terms of her own peace of mind. In terms of making meaning from this text, female consumers may conclude that in their own lives it is ok to make mistakes but that this doesn’t mean you are a failure. Semiotic productivity can also be read into the fact that audiences are given information on where to seek advice if they are affected by a sensitive story line in a soap opera, which is a fair indicator that people do identify with a particular text.

The next type of activity is “enunciative productivity” which refers to “fan talk”; a prime example being when people discuss the antics of soap opera characters the day after the programme has been aired. Not only does this enable people to elicit personal meaning from a story but it also provides a community of individuals enjoying similar tastes. In such a way, consumers are creating a shared environment which in itself can be seen to be an active enterprise. Harris 1998 (www.writersu.com) would agree with Fiske, believing that television has an important role in circulating the meanings of daily life and the ways in which people create a personal identity.

Fiske (1987) suggests that these conversational communities created by fan talk are not ruled by the providers of a text and for this reason the meanings and identities found in a programme or film are beyond the control of the culture industry, which does not serve their interests. However, looking at it from an alternative view point it could be argued that because these conversations are taking place, levels of interest are maintained which means the producer continues to flourish and so the interests of the culture industry are served, as posited by Adorno and Horkheimer.

Enunciative productivity is not only about fan talk, but can also be a matter of adopting the appearance of a preferred celebrity in order to construct a social identity which enables the individual to find a place within a particular community, for example early Elvis fans. More recently, magazines targeted at both male and female consumers provide articles on how to achieve on a limited budget the look of a film actress, sports personality or pop star. Although the fans are expressing themselves and making personal choices they are also promoting and buying into the commodities of the culture industry.

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